Already renewed for a second season, Fox’s freshman comedy “The Mindy Project” has the rare pleasure to close out its season on Tuesday, with the assurance that it’ll return next year.

But that doesn’t mean that star, executive producer and writer Mindy Kaling — who plays love-hungry 30-something OB/GYN Dr. Mindy Lahiri — is ending at a different place than she planned.

Out on the Universal Studios back lot, around the corner from what looks like a giant courthouse and a huge, flat painted row of urban buildings, Kaling is taking a break inside a jumbled restaurant set. From the giant Buddha and pagoda lamps, it might have been a Chinese eatery.

The penultimate episode is in production, involving a frat party and two of Mindy’s ex-boyfriends: cool Lutheran pastor Casey (Anders Holm, “Workaholics”) and dentist Tom (Bill Hader, “Saturday Night Live”). There’s even some violence, but first, it’s time for a snack.

“I’m going to add more Craisins,” Kaling says, referring both to her bowl of yogurt and to her love of dried cranberries. “It’s all about the Craisins.”

And, apparently, it’s also about having a road map.

“Pickup or no pickup,” she says, “we had the same ending plan, but also there would have been a little bit of finality if we hadn’t gotten picked up. I’ve been thinking about the second season since the pilot, because I thought about the world and how big it was and how ambitious we were.”

“She had her ending in July or August,” says Barinholtz. “Even though it might be some kind of cliffhanger-y end, there’s some kind of emotional resolution of where those characters go to over the year — so if we didn’t come back, there would be a sense of completion.”

Violent police encounters in California last year led to the deaths of 157 people and six officers, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday in a report that provides the first statewide tally on police use-of-force incidents.